Someone Asked “What Is The Greatest Single Movie Scene Ever Filmed?” And 29 Shared Their Opinions

The opening scene of Up. That montage of a life together was pure poetry.

Mistersinister1 added:

F**k you it brought me to tears as a grown a** man, I looked over and my gf was balling her eyes out.

Beach scene is Saving Private Ryan

samgamgeerules added:

My uncle, now gone, asked me to see this with him. He served in WWII, and was one of the men landing on Omaha Beach. The first bullet, he took my hand. By the 3rd, he was squeezing it so hard I thought every bone was going to break. By the 5th bullet, a tear down his cheek. By the 10th he was openly weeping. This man who loved and laughed hard, but never ever cried. I knew he was flashing back, so I simply rested my other hand on his arm. When the full scene ended, he whispered in my ear "It's like they looked inside my brain and put my memories up there." That scene was literally that authentic. My uncle was the only one of his entire platoon that made it off the beach. Miraculously no outward injuries save a few scratches. The mental and emotional injuries devastated him to his last breath.

The sword fight between Inigo Montoya and The Man in Black.

The end of Shawshank redemption was pretty good

When the T Rex showed up in Jurassic Park

Woperelli87 added:

I never noticed until recently but there is no music whatsoever during that scene. 99.9% of films would force in a score to up the tension or pop in a few stingers to make sure the audience is perked up. Nope, not the JP paddock scene. The rain served as the score and the scene was 1000x better without background music.

It's when Dorothy steps out of the house into Technicolor and into a new world. It changed film.
The emotional aspect is unreal. That scene is forever engraved.

For me its the scene where Forest Gump meets his son. I love that movie. I was a 90s kid and for some reason Gump taught me a lot about the world I didn't understand. He was like this slow witted observer of all the biggest events that changed American history from the 50s through the 80s. All the time we see him as stumbling through life getting constantly lucky, but always driven by his love of friends and family, and Jenny. It never even occurred that he might be self aware. Then in the final act he finds Jenny in her apartment and she tells him they have a son together.

"Is he...like me?"

The realization that he understood his place in the world the entire time, and still managed to be the person he is, it wrecked me. That film is deeply sentimental for me for other reasons but when I think about the first time I saw that scene and how deeply it affected me, I haven't had such an emotional experience from many other scenes. It won best picture that year for a reason. It really is a fantastic bit of story telling.

The opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark set the bar awfully high

The charge of the Rohirrim. Still gives me chills.

The original chestburst scene from Alien

The scene in Schindler’s List when the Nazis are rounding up Jews in the multi-story building to a frenetic piano soundtrack, and then it shows Nazis playing the same piano in one of the rooms, laughing and dancing. The joy and fun the Nazis are having compared to the panic of the innocents... Spielberg is a master

Truman finally realizing his reality and trying to escape it.

MargotFenring added:

When he's on the boat in the storm, and you can really see that he'd rather die trying than give up...it always has such an impact on me.

Binary sunset in A New Hope

The USS Indianapolis monologue from Jaws. Robert Shaw's delivery is just chilling.

The lobby shootout in The Matrix. It's so well edited and the visual effects are amazing

RL_Meeseeks added:

The ticket guy at the theater told me AFTER I bought a ticket for a different movie that it had started 20 minutes before (I was 15). He told me just to go to whatever other movie I wanted that was starting soon.

I went into The Matrix with absolutely zero idea what it was about. I only knew it was rated R.

MIND BLOWN

The opening scene of Inglorious Bastards

Call it predictable but Roy Batty final monolog in Blade Runner. Hard to do better than that IMO.

The night vision sequence in Silence of the Lambs is great suspense.

No matter how insufferable I find Tom Cruise, watching him question Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men is mesmerizing every time I watch it.

Goodfellas "You're a funny guy". You could cut that tension. Greats scene.